“As it stands, 60 percent of JAG funding over the last three years—totaling more than half a billion dollars—has gone to law enforcement activities. In a new report, titled "Reforming Funding to Reduce Mass Incarceration" [PDF], the Brennan Center for Justice explains why: Because law enforcement agencies can do whatever they want with this money, and most of them think the best way to keep that money coming is to arrest as many people as possible.”

“In 1988, when the programme was created, American cities faced soaring crime rates. Today the problem is that too many people are expensively locked up. A new report from the Brennan Centre for Justice, a law and public-policy institute in New York, suggests that the JAG programme may be partly to blame for this.”